The omens were there from the start. The Australian cricketer Keith Miller, who has died aged 84, was born in Melbourne barely three weeks after a crowd of 105,000 had cheered as a three-year-old colt, Artilleryman, romped home by six lengths in the Melbourne Cup. Rather than scream, the infant probably asked the odds. Life was only going to be a gamble after that, and so it proved - whether as a wartime pilot, an avid follower of horseflesh, a talented Aussie Rules footballer, or as one the most charismatic, unpredictable and extrovert allrounders that cricket has seen.

Known as "Nugget", Miller was the golden boy of his country's cricket in the years immediately following the second world war. He was awarded the MBE for services to the sport, and his portrait, specially commissioned by the Marylebone Cricket Club, much to his delight, hangs in the Lord's pavilion, with those of Sir Donald Bradman and Victor Trumper, the only Australians to be so honoured.

Latterly, he spent 20 years as a special cricket writer for the Daily Express, and then worked for Vernon's Pools, owned appropriately by the influential horseracing figure Robert Sangster.

Miller's playing statistics are impressive enough: as a batsman, 14,183 runs at an average of 48.90 in first-class cricket, 2958 of them in 55 Tests at 36.97, including seven centuries; as a bowler, 497 wickets at 22.30, 170 in Tests at 22.97 apiece, with seven five-wicket hauls and one 10-wicket match. But they fail to convey the sheer exuberance of his game.

When Miller was on centre stage, people took notice. On firm pitches, he could bat, right-handed, with power and panache, driving and cutting as well as any. Only in England, where his commitment to the front foot could make him look cumbersome (especially against the spin of Jim Laker, who took 46 wickets in the 1956 Ashes series) did he struggle; he averaged just 24, with a single century at Lords in 1953.

He was capable of bowling fast, hostile spells, forming, with Ray Lindwall, a formidable new ball partnership that produced 243 wickets, a combination bettered for Australia only by Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie. At slip, where he might stand casually upright with his hands behind his back or just plonked on his thighs, he could catch swallows.

But there was a brooding moodiness about him too. If the day did not arouse his interest, he could just as easily brush away his batting. Against Essex at Southend- on-sea in 1948, the Australians - Bradman's Invincibles - amassed 721 runs in a day, still a record. Promoted to second wicket down and with the score already 364 for two, Miller showed a distaste for the slaughter, and allowed himself to be bowled first ball by Trevor Bailey. "Thank God that's over," he was heard to mutter as he marched back to the pavilion. "He'll learn," was Bradman's response.

For once, the Don was wrong: Miller was not for changing. Indeed, the pair, one a roundhead of massive influence, the other a cavalier and maverick, developed a mutual antipathy that almost certainly cost Miller any chance of captaining his country.

He did, however, become an admired and successful, if occasionally unorthodox, captain of New South Wales. Once, on discovering that he had led an additional man on to the field at the Sydney cricket ground (SCG), his reported response was, "One of you eff off and the rest scatter." The state's fifth Sheffield Shield success in nine years led to him becoming Ian Johnson's vice captain for Australia's inaugural tour of the Caribbean in 1954-55. It had been widely anticipated that he would lead the party, but Bradman's influence prevented his promotion.

The decision hurt Miller, and while the tour was a success, the depth of feeling remained, as a rancorous incident during the fourth Test in Barbados showed. Australia having scored 668, Miller took two wickets in an over to leave West Indies at 146 for six in reply: an Australian win looked certain. But Johnson, inexplicably, removed Miller from the attack, and the ensuing stand of 347 between Denis Atkinson (219) and Clairemont Depeiza (122) remains a Test record for the seventh wicket.

At one stage, Johnson asked Lindwall to bowl, only to be rebuffed. The captain tried to insist on his rights, but found no backing from Miller, who, in a heated exchange, said that Lindwall "shouldn't have to bowl if he doesn't want to".

Later, in the dressing room, Miller told Johnson he could not captain a team of schoolboys. This so angered the captain that, before other players intervened, the pair were prepared to settle things outside with fists. The match was drawn, and although the series was won 3-0 - due, in no small part, to Miller's efforts - Johnson's stock never recovered.

At its best, Miller's bowling could touch the heights of inspiration, capable if not of consistency then of devastating bursts, a byproduct of his unpredictability. Even today, he would be regarded as genuinely fast. This, combined with his height (he was more than 6ft, tall for a bowler in those days) and a high arm action, gave him lift from barely short of a length. If Lindwall swung the new ball massively on a pitch tinged with green, Miller used the seam to great effect, gaining movement both ways.

There were those who considered him the most dangerous of the pair on a hot afternoon, when the ball was old and the opposition appeared in control. He was mercurial though, easily bored, with his performance often depending on how hard he had partied the previous night. But the hangover could bring with it crabbiness, so that a batsman who hung around too long could expect a barrage of bouncers, which, in turn, could draw a hostile reaction from the crowd.

Miller would respond by standing imperiously mid-pitch, making his feelings known. Then, with a petulant toss of his black hair, he would saunter back to whichever bowling mark he decided was appropriate, and, as like as not, deliver yet another snorter past the batsman's nose, before breaking out into a wide grin. Along with Denis Compton, he became a cricketer as matinée idol.

Born in Sunshine, Melbourne, Victoria, Miller was named after two pilots, Sir Keith and Sir Ross Smith, engaged at the time in a historic, 27-day flight from England to Australia. At Melbourne high school, his maths and cricket master was the former Australian captain Bill Woodfull, from whom he learned so fast that in his early teens he was playing district cricket for South Melbourne. "He was," his club coach Hughie Carroll recalled, "so small that you had to be careful not to tread on him, but he seemed to gain about 10in between seasons, and became a commanding batsman."

At 18, during the 1937-38 season, he made his Sheffield Shield debut for Victoria against Tasmania, scoring 181, and in 1939-40 he enhanced his reputation with a century at the Melbourne cricket ground (MCG) against a South Australian attack headed by the great legspinner Clarrie Grimmett. By the end of the 1946-47 season, he had played 18 matches for Victoria, but then economic necessity drove him to New South Wales, for which he played 50 matches until 1955-56.

At the start of his career, he had not been seen as a potential allrounder. In district cricket, Miller had never been more than an occasional bowler but, in January 1941, playing at the MCG for Bradman's XI against McCabe's XI, he was asked to open the bowling in the second innings. He took one wicket for 24 in six overs, raising a few eyebrows with his pace and lift. It was to be the making of his career.

During the second world war, he was a pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), carrying out raids over Germany in Mosquito night-fighters. Between military duties, he played for RAAF sides in 1943 and 1944. He made his first real impact on the cricket-starved British public in the five unofficial Victory Tests of 1945. At Lord's, he scored 185 in 165 minutes for the Dominions (essentially the Australian services), including 100 in 75 minutes before lunch.

His form for the Australian services team that toured England and India in 1945 earned him his place on the Australian tour to New Zealand. He made his Test debut at Wellington in March 1946, Australia's first postwar match, scoring 30 and taking two second-innings wickets for six runs. The following season, against England, he left no one in any doubt as to his ability, finishing the series second only to Bradman with the bat, and Lindwall with the ball. His figures included 7-60 in the first innings of the first Test at Brisbane - his best Test haul - and an unbeaten 141, at number five, in the fourth at Adelaide, his maiden Test hundred.

It was for the flat pitches of the Caribbean eight years later that Miller saved his best batting performances. He hit his highest score of 147 in the first Test in Jamaica, following with 137 in Bridgetown in the fourth. In the fifth and final Test, again in Jamaica, he scored 109 (following bowling figures of 6-107 in the first West Indian innings), when Australia registered their highest ever total of 758 for eight.

Miller returned to Australia to lead his state to yet another Shield triumph, their third in a row. In the match against South Australia at the SCG, he demonstrated his intuitive captaincy. He enjoyed bowling with the breeze from the Randwick end, but, on this occasion, it was missing. He threw the new ball to his fellow Test bowler Alan Davidson. However, just before the left armer delivered his first ball, Miller felt the breeze ruffle his hair; he called for the ball, marked out his own run instead and went on to take 7 for 12 as South Australia were dismissed for 27.

Then came his last full series, the disastrous 1956 tour of England. Struggling with a back injury, and 36 years old, he managed five wickets in each innings of a win in the second Test at Lord's, but failed continuously with the bat, scoring just one half century, and that not until the final match at the Oval.

The Australians paid brief visits to Pakistan and India on the way home, playing one Test in Karachi and one each in Bombay and Calcutta. In Karachi, Miller top scored with 21 in the first innings and made 11 in the second as Australia, beaten by nine wickets, were twice dismissed, for 80 and 187, by Fazal Mahmood, who had match figures of 13 for 114. Fazal was the medium pacer who, two years previously, had destroyed England with 12 wickets at the Oval.

Miller took two wickets in Pakistan's first innings (including that of the great opener Hanif Mohammad for nought), and bowled 12 wicketless overs in the second. By now, however, his knee had given in to the strain. He never played Test cricket again.

His wife Marie survives him.

· Keith Ross Miller, cricketer, born November 28 1919; died October 11 2004